Theatre Review: "Dead Man's Cell Phone" at Wooly Mammoth

Last week I had the pleasure of enjoying an evening at the theatre. This was my first time at the Wooly Mammoth’s new spot on D Street in the burgeoning East End, which people have unfortunately taken to calling “Penn Quarter,” despite the fact that “The East End” is a much cooler name for a neighborhood. In case you’re not familiar with the Wooly Mammoth theatre company, it is “Washington’s most daring theatre company,” according to the New York Times. In d.c., if you like plays, and you want to check out the classics (Shakespeare, Ibsen, Shaw) you’d probably head for the Washington Shakespeare Company’s Lansburgh Theatre (which is less than a block from Wooly Mammoth’s space) or their old digs at the Folger Theatre on Capitol Hill. If you want something a little more left-field and wackier, you’d be best served strolling on over to the Wooly Mammoth, or perhaps the Studio Theatre.

Currently playing at the Mammoth is “Dead Man’s Cell Phone,” which has been extended twice. The play is a world premiere by a playwright named Sarah Ruhl. In addition to being really young to be a successful professional playwright (she’s 33), Ms. Ruhl is also the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, so apparently she’s bad-ass. What I found particularly impressive is that she is great at writing funny. I cannot remember the last time I cracked up this much whilst watching a play. Writing something that is going to make people laugh out loud is exceedingly difficult, so those who are capable of it deserve mad props. (I suspect that writing funny plays may be slightly easier than writing funny novels, as the collaborative nature of the theatre might provide the playwright with talented actors to phrase the funny parts the right way.)

While the play was indeed most amusing, I didn’t feel it was quite as successful at getting across its point. (And I’m not entirely sure what that point was – and I should at least have a germ of an idea of what the point was.) It seemed like there was supposed to be some subtext about technology driving people apart rather than bringing them closer together. But if the playwright was trying to impress that upon the audience, she failed to impress it upon me. In fact, technology, in this case the cell phone of the title, brings the main character into people’s lives. She doesn’t exactly behave the best way once she’s there, but the phone itself serves as her entrée.

The set design was sparse and minimalist (one can imagine that those two adjectives would go hand in hand), which I can totally dig, especially if it is also really creative, as it was here. The acting was uniformly excellent. The main character, Jean, is rather mousy and meek, but Polly Noonan injects the character with enough dynamism to make her compelling and likeable. Sarah Marshall gets many of the best lines as the eponymous dead man’s mother, and she spews them out with angry enthusiasm but never crosses the line into caricature. But there is one thespian that particularly stands out. That would be Rick Foucheaux as Gordon Gottlieb, the cadaver of the title. He’s not on stage that much, yet his character guides everyone else’s actions. And in addition to the emotional climax of the play, he gets to take center stage alone for what I felt was the best part of the whole thing. The second act opens with a monologue/diatribe/oration by Gordon that goes on for several minutes. Rick Foucheaux barely moves; he’s sitting down the whole time. The writing, of course is very strong, but in this scene the actor radiates such magnetism and charisma that you sit there, transfixed, just watching some dude talk for five minutes. And it’s probably the best part of the whole play.